The Silent Stanzas
by wickedsugarrush
Summary: In which Dawn needs help with poetry homework and William of the bloody awful poetry deigns to assist. Of course Spike tries not to admit to things learned and known from books, especially not to Buffy- who doesn't quite care for poetry. Spuffy
1. Stanza One

Before episode 6 season six. There's context mostly in here. It's really rather up to you all to make the connections.

**Stanza 1**

The Summers home was dim. The only company to the light of twilight seeping into the still rooms was the study light in Dawns room.

Spike stuck to the shaded grove of trees and squinted at the house.

Buffy wasn't home he'd bet, but the nibblet definitely was. It was a school night, and even though there was some prowling predator out and about, she was left at home to be safely doing her homework till beddie-bye time.

Spike puckered his lips as he thought defiant thoughts. Buffy probably didn't want him about, but he was going to check in on everything for a bit. Maybe sniff around.

He went into the house, listening for any noises that weren't coming from the little girls room. He tried "Slayer?" tentatively as he crept out of the kitchen. Didn't want to alarm the blonde one- or anyone else for that matter. They tended to be a bit touchy about these things.

There was no answer. He smirked and was about to just pop by her room or maybe the basement for a look when he heard whimpering from Dawn.

Silently racing up the stair case he tested the air for any presence other than human in the girl's room. Somewhere between his gut and his head he detected only the beating heart of one young girl. So, he knocked first and pretended nonchalance. Not wanting to really admit the instant concern he had for the little sister to himself, let alone the girl herself.

"Uh- yes?" Dawn replied.

"Can I come in?" Spike politely said, more out of a relapse to civility than anything else.

"Spike? Yeah."

He popped the door open and sauntered in. The vampire cast his gaze about to see if anything was amiss, or suspicious. Dawns eyes were narrowed in suspicion- but that was pretty much the only thing of suspicious nature residing in the pink and blue bedroom.

The young girl was sitting on her bed, a textbook haphazardly open in front of her, the studious desk area filled with pencil shavings, notebooks and crumpled up pieces of paper at the far corner. Apparently it was abandoned for a better defense against homework.

She said without much feeling. "Hi, Spike. How're you?"

"Having a bit of trouble with the school work there?" He jerked his head towards the book and placed his hands in his trench coat pockets.

She wasn't usually set in disarray for a paper assignment. Dawn rolled her eyes, thinking that her protective older sister had sent her a babysitter with instructions to make sure she did her homework and went to bed on time. At least Spike was cool.

She huffed and pouted a bit. She didn't exactly want to admit that something as silly as this could be this difficult for her. She was in advanced chemistry for goodness sakes.

Spike waited with raised eyebrows. Ready for her to admit weakness at any time she wanted to.

She sighed and looked down at the printed words on the page. "It's this poem."

Spikes features twitched a bit.

Dawn continued, her frustration making her very focused on the issue at hand. "I was supposed to have this figured out a week ago… but with- well… everything it was kinda hard to put time aside to work on something that I didn't like and thought was going to be really easy. This guy has some serious issues."

Spike sniffed and said with a great deal of conviction and callousness "Most poets do."

Dawn looked up at him with a kind of sheepish hopeful look. "Do you think you could help me with it?"

Spike took his hands out and held them up in mock surrender. "I don' think so nibblet, I'm not the right guy to ask about poetry you know."

Dawn was intelligent; she knew he had to have at least some history with poetry. So, she turned to a well tried tactic. Whining. "But- _Spi-ike_! It's _so_ hard to figure out what he's saying and I've been working on it for _hours_ and it's killing my brain!"

Spike looked about ready to crack so she went in for the kill: "And you _have_ to know, I mean you're super good with this. You were like, around when this was written."

Spike fixed her with a thoroughly disparaging expression.

She continued, ignoring his ruffled feathers. "It would be _so _easy for you. And I'm sure you're super great at it. Please?"

She blinked up at him with her large eyes. Spike felt just a twinge. A little nudge. He grumbled, and huffed and then plopped down on the bed and sighed with great exasperation. He didn't have anything better to do anyway.

Dawn smiled and her giggles went an octave higher as she said "Yay!" And promptly handed the book to him. Spike had this sinking feeling, but as soon as the thick book of thin paper hit his hands he knew he was sunk already. Deeper still was when his gaze found the title in bold simple letters.

**His Coy Mistress**

He closed his eyes and tightened his lips. The poem was like a slap in his face. "_Bloody-_ hell. Really?" He gestured with one hand at the book like it was something a mentally challenged and deranged cat had brought in.

Dawn crossed her legs, sitting as if preparing for a philosophic cleansing yoga lesson, but really settling in for one of Spikes entertaining English infused rants. She let her face fade into an almost sympathetic expression- making sure he knew she was just as incensed by the poem.

She honestly had no idea what he was really pissed about, but it was going to be fun finding out.

Spike looked as if he could spit on the poem and informed her that her teachers were mental and they should bloody well learn how to choose poems for children. "I mean what the buggering hell were they _thinking_- this poem isn't for _children_."

"Hey! I'm not a kid."

"That is an entirely different conversation. Now, do you want to know what it's about or not?"

Dawn shut her mouth, and waited.

Spike scanned over the poem. "He wants her sex- she wants to give it to him. But! _She's _too busy following protocol, and being coy, and worrying about what everyone else thinks- that the whole _bloody world _is wasting away. If she'd just _give in _and give him what he wants- what _they_ want…" He shut his mouth tight as if containing himself and his blue eyes looked as if he weren't looking at anything in this room. Dawn watched him with wide eyes. He then looked at Dawn and said with a matter of fact air, "Then they wouldn't have this problem."

Dawn furrowed her brow with a kind of quizzical dubiousness. "Oh-kay. Well, what about the… uh-" She reached for a printed white paper. Spikes eyelids drooped as he looked at her, annoyed.

"The duality of the word 'coy'?" She said brightly.

Spike jerked his head back and slightly curled his lip. "Wha- They have you analyzing the words- what else do they have on that list?"

She scanned the page. "Uh- I have to identify the theme, the kind of poem it is, whether it's a serious warning or a love letter, and basically the purpose of the poem."

Spike scoffed. The vapid ridiculousness of people these days, he thought "Let me see that." He plucked the paper out of her hands, his left hand still holding the book.

Dawn said, trying to do her best to make sure he knew she did her best. "I put the theme as love, and I did the-"

"Wrong." He said plaintively looking as if the paper had said something that was worth a casually inflicted death.

"Wrong, what do you mean wrong- it's a poetry interpretation- it can't be wrong."

He looked at her balefully. "No- it's **wrong.** Tell me, does the stanza:

But at my back I alwaies hear

Times winged Charriot hurrying near:

And yonder all before us lye

Desarts of vast Eternity.

He recited dully, almost as if he were trying to wrap it up before he began. But as he continued, his voice took on a more somber note and he stilled his words to recite them with correct didactic rhythm.

Thy Beauty shall no more be found;

Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound

My ecchoing Song: then Worms shall try

That long preserv'd Virginity:

And your quaint Honour turn to durst;

And into ashes all my Lust.

He continued on with an undertone of bitterness.

The grave's a fine and private place,  
>But none, I think, do there embrace,<p>

Have anything to do with love at all?" He finished with a look of 'you should know better now.'

Dawn looked at him with some kind of dumbstruck glee on her face. "You can read poetry!"

He rolled his eyes, amused with her amusement. "Well- _yeah_ I can bloody **read. **Contrary to popular opinion around here I do have _a brain_." He tapped his dyed head smartly.

"No- I mean like you can read it- like with rhythm and you have the voice. I could actually like poetry if you were reading it." She was smiling- thinking that Buffy should hear Spikes poetry reading voice.

Spike raised his scarred eyebrow and decided to change the subject. "Yeah- well theme's not love, and it's not lust. So, no funny business about it bein' sex and all- because you're too young for poems with that theme anyway."

Dawn fixed him with a stink eye. "It's about… uh…" She stalled.

Spike interrupted her and said definitively "Let's start with something more simple, shall we? Something definitive for your science-y brain of yours. The type of poem."

He nodded, waiting for her confirmation and her original answer. She swiped a loose page from the side of the bed and looking at her writing she said "Uh it's not… Romanticism? Or I mean Alexadrine?"

He clicked his tongue in disapproval. "No- it's a metaphysical poem. It has a structure, and beneath cleverly worded emotionally driven metaphors is a logical reasoning."

"Oh."

"You're looking at me like I'm crazy." Spike looked- not like himself. He hadn't donned a narrowed expression, or haughty tilt- his face was open, with focused eyes.

"No I'm not." Dawn said in that tone that all teenagers of this day and age inherently know.

Spike folded his arms across the book and said "Fine then. Amidst all this what's his purpose then? His logical argument?"

Dawn bared her teeth in a kind of sheepish 'I'm trying, I really am!' admission. "Give me a hint?"

Spike acquiesced and intoned "Now let us sport us while we may;

And now, like am'rous birds of prey,

Rather at once our Time devour,

Than languish in his slow-chapt pow'r."

Dawn had a look of comprehension on her face before she quickly said "He's saying that they need to be together when they can…" Spike made a rolling motion with his hand making the universal sign for 'go on, more.'

" They need to live on their time… and seize the moment because time may last forever but they won't!"

Spike smiled and nodded, being a bit proud of the girlie. "Yep. Carpe Diem. That's your theme there because it's mentioned throughout the poem and is the underlying message even when it's not being mentioned."

Dawn nodded, pleased with herself. "So 'coy.'"

Spike stated simply as if he were informing her of news. "Meaning of the word's changed."

"What?"

"Yeah, look it up in your history books…later."

"Uh-" The meaning of words changing wasn't going to be in her history books, but it looked like the vampire wasn't going to hear of it. Ah- well that's why the internet was invented… sort of.

"Lines five to twelve- they're specific references too. Back when England was bein' conquest hungry."

"Alright."

Spike nodded and tossed the book back on her bed. "Right, well. That's all there is on that."

Dawn watched with a concerned twist to her mouth as her protective babysitter got up. He seemed irritated, almost uncomfortable.

"Spike?"

He turned to her hands in his jacket pockets again. She wanted to ask him why he was so affected by the words in her textbook, and why he talked like he missed talking about poetry, but the words just wouldn't form. She sensed that it was a bit sensitive to him.

"Thank you for helping me. I have more poetry assignments coming up so- maybe if…"

He nodded. "Yeah, sure. I'll help." He went to the door thinking that maybe he still had time to lurk about before others less inclined to chat with him arrived.

Dawn watched him leave her room and wondered if Buffy knew Spike liked poetry.

**Chorus**

Spike sincerely hoped that it didn't get back to Buffy. It would ruin his image.

He was following her from a distance. Her blonde hair was glowing a soft ash color in the moonlight, swaying with her every movement. He sensed a Kerzis demon approaching. Rather he smelled it, tasted it's otherness on the breeze. It thought it was stalking her alone- but that was just due to its stupid flaw of being only able to see heat.

Spike as of late didn't have much heat.

He creeped up behind the leathery skinned brute grabbed the horn on the right jerked it back and with his left hand placed his iron grip on the flared shoulder and twisted. There was a series of snaps and then he released the twitching demonic body fell into the shrubbery.

He watched as Buffy turned around, bringing her eyebrows together. She was pretty far off so he wasn't too worried about having her hear the sounds of the death act.

He made a mistake. She was almost at her house. Nothing else was attacking. He was going to sit by the tree and maybe wait and watch till she slept.

Buffy whirled around. Her fists in her regular fighting stance, half based on instinct and a bit on discipline. The last few slayers were based on a particular fighting style. Buffy, was Buffy, and he was enamored of her. Of her aspects.

"I can kick your ass."

"You're welcome to try love- I'd love a good tussle."

"Ugh- Spike."

At least it was a reaction. It was a masochistic kind of pleasure he decided, like a knife hitting home and fresh blood pooling down his navel. Pleasurable in a sick kind of way that made him want more.

He wanted to say something, something true and sincere- to get a reaction, yes, but not this one. This thought he'd keep till he maybe had her closer, nearer almost so he could touch her. It might never be said at all, but as much as he craved her look, no matter the kind, he couldn't bear to have it be reviled.

Thou art to me a delicious torment.

She could not see it.

"What do you want?"

"Just takin' a walk love."

She looked at him, her fists already tucked under her arms. She looked suspicious, as if she were measuring him.

He could feel her gaze. Delicious.

"It's been quiet tonight."

"Lovely weather for it."

"I suppose."

Torment.

It was too close to something neither had prepared for. They parted, one more so than the other, and the night ended for them.

"Thou art to me a delicious torment." Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)


	2. Stanza Two

**Stanza 2**

_After the accident, After the kiss._

The light was on again in Dawns room. Because of the time of year it appeared that the two lights, one focused white and sheltered inside, the other outside bruised from the impending dark, were separated only by the colors they cast.

The rest of the house was still and dark. Willow and the other live in witch were absent. Buffy was with Xander and Anya, or Giles at the Magic Box.

Spike slinked over to the familiar house. It was a good place to avoid those who were looking for him, and it wouldn't hurt to check up on the bit. Besides- maybe she needed his help again. It was nice to be useful. He was still getting used to that sensation... that shape of thought.

He tried the back door and it opened easily. He frowned a bit, his lip curling in distaste of his discovery. It was just too easy. Dawn alone and all. He clunked up the stairs, making no effort to be quiet, yet still maintaining the practiced stealth of his nature.

He knocked on the white door. "Dawn?"

"Hey, Spike." He pushed the door open and she looked over at him from her desk.

He pinched his lips in a show of curiosity. "They leaving you alone a whole lot now?"

She shrugged. "Frequently, but not for long."

Spike snorted derisively "Don't keep you very safe- what with the unlocked back door an' all."

She shuffled her papers and off handedly tossed out "Unlocked it so you wouldn't pick the lock. It makes the door stick. I have homework other than science. Will you-?"

She trailed off and he blinked at her. "Uh yeah, sure nibblet."

"It's on literature now- cuz we've taken a break from poetry due to – well never mind. Our teacher's crazy. But-"

"This the same crazy bint who made you read _that poem_?" Spike spat it out.

Dawn flattened her mouth to a line. "The same- but anyway- we're onto Emerson or something."

"You know kip- I think we should just take all of this nonsense down to The Bronze. You've got to be a bit peaky what with them all leaving you here and what not."

"I-I… don't know."

"Here's a lesson in literature nibs- Things like literature- not meant to be studied. Meant to be enjoyed, felt- experienced. You want to 'get literature'?" Spike tossed his hands up and disdainfully air quoted and yanked one of his arms down and pointed accusingly "You gotta go out and know it to write it so you can know. Stick that in your teachers windpipe." He folded his arms.

"Uh- I think the expression is stick that in your pipe and smoke it."

"I know the expression."

"I don't know Spike- I should… actually do something maybe…"

"Be still my unbeating heart-

Cast a cold Eye  
>On Life, on Death.<br>Horseman, pass by!"

Dawn glared at him. "What is that supposed to mean."

"Aren't you supposed to be better at poetry now?"

"Well-"

"Means you're dead if you do, dead if you don't, but what's the point if you're not doing- c'mon girly get."

Suddenly Dawn did not really feel like being inside and studying things that did not necessarily need to be studied. She looked at the vampire and shrugged- "Should I change?"

"For who?"

After a walk in which Dawn mostly talked about school things and Spike looked about for crawlies and monsters under the bushes, Dawn asked a question that he couldn't avoid. Spike put out a cigarette as he escorted Dawn inside the club.

"Didn't you hear a word I said?" Dawn whined, obviously irritated.

Spike patted her on the shoulder "Yeah, I did- I was lookin' for other things nibblet. Why don't you boil the problem down then come at me again. I'll get some… uh mocha whatever for you." He pointed to a table by the billiard. "Get that."

So, Dawn sat and Spike came over and she said again that she didn't think others thought that she could do anything.

"Anything?" Spike aimed for the red striped ball on the pool table.

"Well, I guess, yeah. They don't trust me to do anything." She slurped her mocha noisily because she wanted to drink it and it was far too hot.

"Probably because you can't, nibs." And he took the shot.

Dawns mouth fell open, and before she could retaliate he said. "Here's another literature lesson for ya- the greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

Dawn didn't exactly know what kind of literature that was coming from and didn't quite understand the connection but-

"Anything is an unrestrained term used for things of an …infinite nature."

Spike tossed his head back and ran his tongue over his teeth. "That's only for two people in love." As soon as he spoke the words he seemed to want to snatch it back out of the air as if he had never said it at all. Hide it away in his coat pocket, or press in back into his chest and out his back as if it had never been shot through him in the first place.

Dawn propped her head up on her hand and properly waited as Spikes expression changed. She had recognized a brief flash from the expression that had appeared juxtaposed on his face before and it was gone as he determined to go back to his one man billiard game. Once he made the shot, hissed a curse as it bounced off the felt edge she sighed, "Ohkaaay. I still don't get it."

Spike banged the stick on the ground. "You're a kid. Just keep that in mind."

"You all keep saying that! You say that – well yeah that's because you make my chem teacher look young, but-"

He swung around and leaned in close to her mid sentence and fervently growled "Pipe down. You know that's one of the reasons you're still a child."

He leaned back, fixed her with a look while he appeared to suck on his right fang. He raised a hand with a pointed finger of chipped black nail polish.

"Lemme give ya an example then nibblet, since you find it so difficult to grasp."

Dawn rolled her eyes and went back to her mocha to see if it was any cooler yet, though she knew it wasn't going to be. Spike sat down across from her, propped the pool stick against the table and leaned back.

"Ever read Batman?"

Dawn dropped her head down and gave him a look. "Batman."

"Yeah. Story of the Great Bat goes that his parents were shot and murdered by some stupid sod who let the state of the world get to him and he goes and becomes a man. Accepts all responsibility, creates his own journey where he trains his body to perfection and faces his greatest fear." Spike spread his legs out placed them against the lower support of the table. "He wasn't a child after his parents died. His entire life was his responsibility and he took on the responsibility of protecting the city."

Spike stuck his hands in his pockets. "You have to think about your responsibility. Right now- you're mine and so I'm a man for now."

Dawn had furrowed brows and a concerned look as if she was going to protest again.

"I'm not sayin' I never regressed or was ever fully a man. Don't think you can ever really understand and the people who live long enough to find out are not…"

Dawn leaned forward in anticipation.

"…Inclined to act on that wisdom."

Dawn blinked repeatedly. It was odd to her that this advice was coming from Spike. The sounds of the Bronze wafted around them, and Dawn felt a little tipped off balance and looked down at her mocha. She looked up when Spike nudged her with the Billiard stick thing. "Your turn."

"Ok."

"You don't know how do you?"

"Yeah I do!"

Spike snorted. "Go ahead."

Dawn took the stick from him with narrowed eyes. "So, why am I your responsibility? How do you just choose that- how does that even make you a man? It doesn't make any sense." She said as she tried to mimic what she saw when people cracked the colored balls into the holes. It glanced off the slick surface and it bumped along and clattered against each other.

She turned to Spike to see whether or not he approved, but his face, his body was elsewhere. She saw the blonde head of her sister.

Buffy spotted him too, then she saw Dawn. Dawn re-found her mocha and took great pleasure in downing most of it. Buffy came over, and Dawn watched as Spike became coiled, stuffed up full of a potent energy.

Such open want on his face. Buffy looked at Dawn with a question on her lips but Dawn spotted Xander and waved to Buffy. "See you at home Buffy. I'll get Xander to drive me home."

Buffy's vision was blocked off by Spike sliding in front of her. Her body language shifted to one of a coiled awareness.

**Chorus**

All he could think about was that night that the building came crashing down on them as his world view crashed and crumbled away in her wake. Their awakening. As they slammed into the walls, they broke free into each other.

"Slayer, you're looking well tonight."

She looked more than well. He could feel her heat, remember her fire, she looked like glory. Even with her eyes questioning, he could tell she was responding, remembering.

"…Spike- Why is Dawn-"

"Was bored out of her mind, and I was helping her with her homework."

He stepped closer, a lip curling up in pleasure at her protective tendencies.

"At the Bronze."

"It was an important lesson. Not to be learned from books. Surely you understand that….knowing things…" his focus grazed along her lips. "...of visceral things is better not from books."

She breathed in and her mouth relaxed her lower lip parted.

"Ah, Slayer." His voice was a caress.

But as she dropped the weight of his gaze, and her cheeks became flush, he remembered how the sweat and grime on her skin tasted the sweetest with her stinging blood and pounding heart, and he began to imagine her hair sticking to her neck and her crying out his name- he leaned towards her.

She took a step back.

"Desire, isn't love Spike."

"It would have burned us bad had we stopped." A diary he read once, in his days of a young man searching the dark but not wholly dusty areas of the library, Casanova came to mind.

"I'm going to go back home with Dawn. Goodbye Spike."

"It might not be love for you yet, but you'll wish it." He said as she turned.

He watched her go, and let her heat stain him.

Under Ben Bulben, W.B. Yeats. "Cast a cold eye, on life on death, Horsemen pass by!"- Spikes comment is mostly due to his disregard that Yeats should have ever been concerned that his actions affected other people. This is not yet the Spike with a hero 'thing.'

"Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were." W.H. Auden (1907-1973)

"The raging fire which urged us on was scorching us; it would have burned us had we tried to restrain it." Casanova (1725-1798) _Memoirs_

"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." Walter Bagehot (1826-1877)

Wondering if I should be done.


End file.
